Alfred Roman, The military operations of General Beauregard in the war between the states, 1861 to 1865

[421] of the United States might have been crippled, by the prevention of duties from imports and exports; and, by the development of such power and resources, the Confederate States might have secured the recognition of their established place among the independent nations of the world. But the administration failed to discover the true policy, or had not the capacity and energy to carry it out. That which is highly practicable for some men is wholly impracticable for others. Hence, the successes and failures that checker life mark the difference between men of eminent competence and those who bear the brand of signal incompetence on great occasions.

The blockade—at first a mere semblance—was allowed to grow gradually, and, by great and intelligent effort on the part of the North, became more efficient and real, although never perfect. Meanwhile, the Confederate administration expended its energies and resources, thus cramped, in a few partially successful attempts at building ironclads at the South, and had an agent in England to buy ships for the purpose of attacking Northern commerce on the seas. The frigate Merrimac, raised from the water at Norfolk, was by March, 1862, converted into the ironclad ram Virginia, with a draught of twenty-two feet. She was not seaworthy, and was unable to drive the Federal fleet out of the shallow waters of Chesapeake Bay; and when the peninsula was evacuated she had to be burned, on Craney Island, within two months after her completion. The steam-ram Mississippi, at New Orleans, was not finished when that city fell. The Louisiana, from defective machinery, was of little account. The North Carolina and the Raleigh, constructed at Wilmington, went to the bottom at the entrance of the Cape Fear River, without accomplishing anything. The Palmetto State and the Chicora, at Charleston, had home-made machinery, none having been imported by the government. This was so inadequate that what was effected with the vessels hardly merits a special mention. There was— we might say—one exception: the Arkansas, saved from destruction by the forethought of General Beauregard, but whose short and glorious career was due to the intrepidity of her commander, his officers and crew, and not to her own strength and capacity. None of these Confederate vessels or ironclads were, in the strict sense of the word, seaworthy, and, beyond river and harbor defence, none of them could render effectual service.